EFF joined over 50 privacy and civil society organizations that sent two letters to Congress demanding it vote against the Senate Intelligence Committee's cybersecurity "information sharing" bill, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 (CISA, S. 754) and the House Intelligence Committee’s bill, the Protecting Cyber Networks Act (PCNA, HR 1560). The letters demand Congress oppose the bills as the House will be voting on the cybersecurity bills shortly.

As the letter points out, CISA and the PCNA are surveillance bills in disguise that may not even improve computer security. In fact:

EFF, Access, and a coalition of other digital rights organizations have launched a campaign opposing legislative attempts to make information sharing between companies and the government easier. The 5 bills—touted as cybersecurity bills—would provide legal avenues for Internet companies to share unprecedented amounts of data with the US government, often with few protections for private information that may be included in these data dumps.

On this day in 1993, the Clinton White House introduced the Clipper Chip, a plan for building in hardware backdoors to communications technologies. The chip would be used in American secure voice equipment, giving law enforcement agencies the explicit ability to decrypt its traffic using a key stored by the government. The White House promised that only law enforcement with proper "legal authorization" could access that key—and thus, the contents of the communications.

The Senate Intelligence Committee advanced a terrible cybersecurity bill called the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 (CISA) to the Senate floor last week. The new chair (and hugefan of transparency) Senator Richard Burr may have set a record as he kept the bill secret until Tuesday night. Unfortunately, the newest Senate Intelligence bill is one of the worst yet.